More spice, less vice for Kings Cross

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Landlords of Kings Cross sex clubs, striptease venues, adult shops and some pubs should be rewarded for giving up vice with approvals to build bigger buildings with "sophisticated" tenants, the City of Sydney councillor Shayne Mallard says.

The council is struggling to deal with a rapidly changing area, a string of vacant shops along Darlinghurst Road, and plans to create a "city of villages", of which the Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, wants Kings Cross to be one.

Under the Mallard scheme, property owners would be given one-off development bonuses if they agreed to the cancellation of their rights to continue previously approved sex and alcohol businesses, known as existing-use rights. Such bonuses would allow an extra floor to be built on a building in a street of predominantly three-storey properties, with the hope it would encourage developers to undertake a diverse range of projects.

The Lord Mayor wanted to wait to deal with buildings along Darlinghurst Road as part of the new City Plan, a huge document being developed for the inner city, said her spokesman, Jeff Lewis. But he did not rule out developer bonuses, saying the suggestion should be dealt with as part of the wider review. "We'll be reviewing all these things," he said.

Cr Mallard wants to rid the Cross of its "sleaziest" sex businesses, making the area "naughty but nice" - a position not far from that of Cr Moore. Recently she announced plans to restrict the area's strip-club spruikers, though she has criticised the former South Sydney Council for awarding developers with rights to build higher buildings in return for providing community facilities.

Cr Mallard wants to mimic the former mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, who used council powers to acquire buildings used for sex, cancel the rights to do so, and develop them for other purposes. "The sleazier element of [the sex industry], in my view, is almost obsolete anyway," he said. "[It] is right to … get the area reborn in more of a sort of sophisticated style. This is just part of the evolution. The sleaziest parts of the sex industry, with the spruikers and the strip girls and the little cubicles and all that stuff … are causing the most grief to the residents and stopping people going down there to the Cross."

But few property owners would redevelop their buildings when height limits made it not worth the risk, he said, so bonuses needed to be part of the City Plan.

The idea is backed by the Kings Cross Partnership, a local business group. Unlike Cr Mallard, though, the group does not want to rid the main strip of its four strip clubs, two cabarets, five sex shops and brothel. Instead, it says the Cross needs a much broader variety of restaurants, shops and other businesses to prove attractive, which Cr Mallard's plan should help to achieve.

NAUGHTY BUT NICE

. City of Sydney preparing new plan for central city, including Kings Cross.